CGC Game 9: Dracula (Intellivision) [Console]

[PistolsAtDawn]

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Gameplay video

Core info

You are Count Dracula. Rise from your resting place in the graveyard and fly into the night! Travel in two forms - as a man or a bat. Wolves hound you when you are in human form, and vultures snatch at the bat you can become. You've got to sink your teeth into a victim soon. You're growing paler and slowing down. Constables throw stakes that'll stop you cold! Bite all the victims you can find, then return to your resting place before sunrise, or you'll never hunt again!

Source

Here is the controller overlay for this game. This is helpful when getting started so you know which of the many Intellivison controller buttons it's expecting you to press for the menu! (buttons 1-9 are used in addition to the three action buttons and the directional disc but not Clear, 0 or Enter).

Dracula-overlay.jpg (28.88 KiB) Viewed 9628 times

Note: You'll need to set the menu option "Map" to 0 in the core's option menu because you can't start the game if left on Auto. When the game starts, it's waiting for you to select the number of players and the difficulty level. Once you've done that, press 8 (Start on the overlay) to get started.

Play however you'd like! The point is to enjoy and have fun, but if you would like to compete on high scores, please let us all know how you played (as in, with a arcade control panel, gamepad, etc.). We're on the honor system here for reporting high scores, so if you used cheats, fess up!

Please share with us your thoughts, jokes, frustrations or anything else related to this game that you may discover (i.e. if you discover the game itself was featured or visible in some other form of entertainment like a movie or TV show).

[PistolsAtDawn]

This is, IMHO, one of the best games published for the Intellivision. It's also a good one to play using a standard gamepad as there aren't that many buttons needed for it beyond the start menu.

This game may have influenced my love for all-things Dracula. It definitely introduced me to the character anyway.

[RascalUK]

Without doubt one of the games that was responsible for me ultimately becoming a games journalist and spending the best part of a lifetime wrting about games. Just hunted around for something I wrote years ago for myself around Drac on the Intellivision.Link here - https://medium.com/@iampaulmcnally/30af8aba2c6d for posterity.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Without doubt one of the games that was responsible for me ultimately becoming a games journalist and spending the best part of a lifetime wrting about games. Just hunted around for something I wrote years ago for myself around Drac on the Intellivision.Link here - https://medium.com/@iampaulmcnally/30af8aba2c6d for posterity.

10 pin bowling. Just you mentioning that name brought back a flood of memories. We also sat around and played as a family. My brother may not have been born yet when we were playing.

There is something more about this hobby than just the games.

[RascalUK]

The Intellivision is 100% the reason I got into collecting all my old memories again. I remember I always wanted Boxing but never had it as a kid. Bought it when I got this Intellivision a few years ago. Put the cartridge in. Two players! I completely forgot the games like Soccer etc had to have two players. Still never played Boxing!

[PistolsAtDawn]

Two players! I completely forgot the games like Soccer etc had to have two players. Still never played Boxing!

That was always disappointing. As a kid, I thought I was doing something wrong. Nope, there just isn't a computer player! Same for Triple Action.

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I got to Night 22 or 23 before I died. Oddly it doesn't feel like it gets all that much harder past the first few levels.

I look forward to seeing how I can do with an original controller. Hopefully the adapter I ordered will be here this week.

[charmless]

Enough about your nostalgia I'm stuck! I get that you chose 1 or 2 players with the 1 and 2 buttons. But how do I actually start the game? I'm sitting here pressing buttons like my 3-year old.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Enough about your nostalgia I'm stuck! I get that you chose 1 or 2 players with the 1 and 2 buttons. But how do I actually start the game? I'm sitting here pressing buttons like my 3-year old.

You need to also choose a difficulty level and then press whatever you mapped the '8' key to on your controller. Also make sure you set the Map option in the core's menu to something other than Auto. It won't start otherwise.

Second gen consoles really didn't have any established conventions yet, and it shows in places like this.

[charmless]

Enough about your nostalgia I'm stuck! I get that you chose 1 or 2 players with the 1 and 2 buttons. But how do I actually start the game? I'm sitting here pressing buttons like my 3-year old.

You need to also choose a difficulty level and then press whatever you mapped the '8' key to on your controller. Also make sure you set the Map option in the core's menu to something other than Auto. It won't start otherwise.

Second gen consoles really didn't have any established conventions yet, and it shows in places like this.

Ah, the 8 key. Makes perfect.... never mind. I'll try that now.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Ah, the 8 key. Makes perfect.... never mind. I'll try that now.

It does not make sense, but that's why it's in the OP.

[charmless]

Ah, the 8 key. Makes perfect.... never mind. I'll try that now.

It does not make sense, but that's why it's in the OP.

Note to self. Read OP.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Well unfortunately for me the InTv adapter I bought (Retronic Designs) is a true adapter and not an encoder, so it will send signals to the MiSTer accurate to the original flexible circuit that's folded in half within the controller. This means each single button on the controller sends multiple button presses to the MiSTer, and I'm fairly certain that the framework can't interpret that any differently to make it work - not currently anyway.

Unfortunately the Ultimate PC Interface adapter is about 3x as expensive as the Retronic Designs adapter and that's before taxes and shipping. The Vision-dapter is around the same price. I love the Intellivision, but I didn't want to spend almost $100 USD on an adapter that would only be used for it. It would make more sense if I had a bunch of original controllers for other consoles with a D9 connection, but I don't.

[charmless]

Ok, so I had much more fun with Dracula than I thought I would. I'm guessing the controls are better with the real controller but it worked ok with the PS4-controller I was using.

I really enjoyed the structure of the game with the day/night cycle. The fact that Dracula was out on the town knocking on peoples doors to lure them out made me laugh out loud. The risk/reward of turning into a bat was also an awesome game design choice. I just wished you could bite the town guard (maybe you can?) cus he was pissing me off.

By the end I was able to clear quite a few nights (playing on easy) and was actually pretty hooked on the game. Good stuff.

[charmless]

Well unfortunately for me the InTv adapter I bought (Retronic Designs) is a true adapter and not an encoder, so it will send signals to the MiSTer accurate to the original flexible circuit that's folded in half within the controller. This means each single button on the controller sends multiple button presses to the MiSTer, and I'm fairly certain that the framework can't interpret that any differently to make it work - not currently anyway.

Unfortunately the Ultimate PC Interface adapter is about 3x as expensive as the Retronic Designs adapter and that's before taxes and shipping. The Vision-dapter is around the same price. I love the Intellivision, but I didn't want to spend almost $100 USD on an adapter that would only be used for it. It would make more sense if I had a bunch of original controllers for other consoles with a D9 connection, but I don't.

Spending 100 USD on an adapter sounds crazy. I'm guessing there's no Intellivision adapter for the Gamer-PRO? https://ultimatemister.com/product-cate ... gamer-pro/

[PistolsAtDawn]

Ok, so I had much more fun with Dracula than I thought I would. I'm guessing the controls are better with the real controller but it worked ok with the PS4-controller I was using.

I really enjoyed the structure of the game with the day/night cycle. The fact that Dracula was out on the town knocking on peoples doors to lure them out made me laugh out loud. The risk/reward of turning into a bat was also an awesome game design choice. I just wished you could bite the town guard (maybe you can?) cus he was pissing me off.

By the end I was able to clear quite a few nights (playing on easy) and was actually pretty hooked on the game. Good stuff.

YES! It is a fun game, right? Surprisingly so given how limited it is. Most of the InTV games had a top-down view but Dracula has at least some modicum of three dimensions to it.

You can bite victims or turn them into zombies. The constable flees from zombies, but then nobody will come out of their house if a zombie is within view. The dogs drive me nuts because after you get bitten not only are you slower but you can't knock on doors anymore. Those stop appearing after the first few nights though weirdly. That bat saves you in that scenario where you're bitten and slow. It's not too hard to avoid the hawk/vulture long enough to get back to the graveyard and into your coffin.

I think it's an interesting decision that you don't have a life bar and can't be killed aside from the sun coming up.

Imagic made several very good games for the InTV. I wonder what might have been should they have survived the video game crash in the USA in 1983.

Spending 100 USD on an adapter sounds crazy. I'm guessing there's no Intellivision adapter for the Gamer-PRO? https://ultimatemister.com/product-cate ... gamer-pro/

No such luck unfortunately. It's a shame because even if I wanted to buy a different solution, I sank $40 into the Retronic Designs adapter already (I can still use it with the jzIntv emulator through a Raspi or a PC at least). I have at least one Sega MD/Genesis controller that can also be used with it, so it won't go to waste. But I won't be using Intellivision controllers with my MiSTer which is a bummer. The jzIntv emulator is excellent, however, so it's not as though the only accurate way to play is through FPGAs.